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Pivotals firm up on FII support; Nifty up 20 points, 937.85

Pivotals firmed up further on heavy buying support from foreign institutional investors at the National Stock Exchange in Bombay today.

Reflecting the firm trend, the S&P CNX Nifty opened lower at 917.40 points, incidentally the day's low, touched the day's high of 940.15 before closing at 937.85 points, showing a smart gain of 20.60 points against the previous close of 917.25 points.

The S&P CNX Defty Index closed higher by 17 points at 1450.90 against the previous close of 1433.90. CNX Nifty Junior also moved up by 17.15 points to 764.35 against the previous close of 747.20.

The S&P CNX 500 equity and CNX Midcap 200 indices rose by 8.53 and 5.57 points to 622.31 and 525.17 points against the previous close of 613.78 and 519.60 points respectively.

The market witnessed a turnover of Rs 137.79 billion comprising 50.56 million shares in 192,720 trades. Debentures turnover was at Rs 515,000.

Meanwhile, 617 securities advanced, 281 declined and 88 held steady with 55 hitting their price bands.

The most actively traded securities were ITC with a turnover of Rs 2.49 billion and Satyam Computer with a turnover of Rs 2.41 billion.

FIIs buy value was Rs 500.72 million against the sell value of Rs 316.39 million. FIIs' net investment stood at rs 184.33 million. The FIs and mutual funds buy value was lower at Rs 42.51 million against the sell value of Rs 11.09 million.

Other actively traded securities were SBI (Rs 941.3 million), Reliance (Rs 766.6 million), ACC (Rs 740.7 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 683.4 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 665.6 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 607.4 million), Castrol (Rs 449.1 million), Telco (Rs 381.7 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 352.5 million), Tata Tea (Rs 325.6 million), BHEL (Rs 232.4 million), BFL Software (Rs 217.4 million), L&T (Rs 201.4 million), Silverline (Rs 120.9 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 103.2 million), Tisco (Rs 101 million), HCL-HP (Rs 93.3 million), Wipro (Rs 82 million), Bata India (Rs 76.2 million), Colgate (Rs 70.2 million) and Bank of Baroda (Rs 60.5 million).

Top five S&P CNX Nifty gainers include BHEL which closed at Rs 29l.85 (215.45), Hindustan Lever at Rs 1718.70 (1647.10), Nestle closed higher at Rs 439.50 (424.15), Pond's at Rs 1250.60 (1208.95) and Reliance at Rs 138.50 (134.35).

The top S&P CNX Nifty losers were Asian Paints which closed at Rs 282.60 (294.75), East India Hotels at Rs 213.80 (221.10), Rs IPCL at 48.40 (49.70) and ACC at Rs 1294.10 (1317.40).

The wholesale debt market of NSE witnessed trading worth Rs 2.88 billion, the zero-coupon government bond maturing in year 2000 was traded for Rs 450 million at a weighted yield of 11.01 per cent. The 364-day treasury bill maturing on October 9, 1998 was traded for Rs 200 million at a weighted yield of 7.68 per cent. The certificate of deposit issued by Industrial Finance Corporation of India, maturing on March 18,1999 was traded for Rs 500 million at a weighted yield of 11.55 per cent. Three repo deals worth Rs 450 million were traded at rates ranging from 6.75 per cent to 6.88 per cent for a repo term of 13 days.

UNI

UNI